Highway Maintenance Response Time Standards

DRAFTMAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS FIRST GUIDANCEA well-maintained infrastructure is vital to the transportation system mobility, reliability,safety, and the economic competitiveness of New York State. In an effort to improvethe infrastructure and transportation services, the Department has adopted aMaintenance and Operations First approach to be incorporated in this Program UpdateCycle. The Maintenance and Operations First strategy provides a focus onmaintenance and operations with an emphasis on systems management, operationsmanagement, response maintenance, preventive maintenance and design modification(corrective) maintenance. The concept of operations and management requirescommon terms and definitions. These terms have been defined to provide a commonunderstanding by those managing, installing, and operating transportation systems andmay be found in Appendix A. These terms may change current perceptions.Systems management, operations management, response maintenance, preventivemaintenance and design modification (corrective) maintenance have been defined forthe highway and bridge assets owned, maintained and operated by the Department withguidance on treatments and services in this document. These assets include, but arenot limited to pavement, structures, guide rail, lighting, overhead sign structures, trafficsignals, signs, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) elements, pavement markings,and culverts. The Maintenance and Operations First approach goes beyond thetraditional asset management approach that focuses mainly on physical assets andinstead, also deals with services (such as transportation management center (TMC)operations and Highway Emergency Local Patrol (Help)) and systems (such asAdvanced Traffic Management Systems (ATMS) systems). A key element in this newapproach is recognition that ITS operations and traveler information services isconsidered as integral to the strategy. That is, these activities are essential tomaintaining the maximum availability of the capacity, mobility, reliability, and safety ofthe system. For example, a HELP truck response, and resultant quicker clearance ofan incident, is critical to timely restoration (maintenance) of the normally availablehighway capacity.2